Cooking with peppercorns
"something that was once so globe-shapingly, earth-shatteringly rare and precious, and is now so readily available and inexpensive."
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
I promised to do with peppercorns what I did yesterday with salt, so here we go. I'm leaving out sichuan peppercorns though as they're not a true peppercorn and they deserve a post all to themselves. Not that I have ever used them which is most remiss of me.
So cooking with peppercorns. Well we all immediately think of pepper steak - and I love it. There are heaps of recipes out there, but just a couple of things on this. First a word from Nigel Slater:
"Good though this dish is, I find the crunch of the virtually whole spices a bit too much and often throw in some unorthodox soft green peppercorns, too. An act that would be sacrilege, if it wasn't so darned good. These mellow the whole dish and avoid the gravel effect of a mouthful of dried spices." Nigel Slater
And lots of other people seem to agree - but I still make it with black ones. Delia has a couple of variations on the theme, as well as a basic pepper steak recipe. She has a Pepper Crusted Fillet of Beef recipe with peppercorns and also a Braised Steak au Poivre in Red Wine. I have tried the second of these two and it was pretty nice, but not quite as nice as her picture. So maybe I did something wrong. I might try it again one day.
Before moving on to more adventurous things to do with peppercorns, an aside on crushing them. You're supposed to do it in a pestle and mortar - but:
"Crushing the peppercorns takes ages, and they will ping all over your kitchen if you’re not careful, and probably even if you are. " Sophie Mackenzie - The Oval Epicure
And I have to say that I agree here. Now I have always thought it's because my pestle and mortar is a bit of a pretend one - well I've thought people might say that. It's quite small and aesthetically pleasing to look at, but fairly ineffective I think. It looks more or less exactly like the one shown here. When I have to crush peppercorns I always try to do the right thing, but quickly give up as the peppercorns do indeed 'ping all over my kitchen'. So I generally resort to folding them in a couple of sheets of greaseproof paper which I then bash with a rolling pin. Much more effective. Or maybe I should just buy a better pestle and mortar. Perhaps next time Aldi have them amongst their special offerings. I was tempted last time but didn't weaken. I'm running out of storage in my kitchen after all.
And again a word from Nigel Slater on crushing peppercorns. You mustn't make them too fine - and Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall for one agrees with him:
"You would think, wouldn't you, that the finer you crush a spice the more flavour you would get out of it. Yet do this simple test. Crush a palmful of your plumpest black peppercorns in a pepper mill, then crack another little batch lightly but firmly with a pestle, or other heavy object. Now inhale. No contest, is there? The roughly crushed spice is more heady and has much deeper, more interesting things going on than the fine powder." Nigel Slater
But then you get the crunchy bit that he was complaining about before.
Anyway - moving on. I began on searching for peppercorn dishes when I had the Tuscany challenge from David. For what I nearly cooked for him was Peposo - a beef pepper stew shown below.
It's supposed to only contain beef, wine, garlic and pepper and its origins are said to go back to the building of Florence's duomo. It's what the workers ate. There is an interesting little article and a recipe at Visit Tuscany but there are lots more recipes out there, and interestingly, although the article said you are not allowed to use tomatoes, their recipe actually had some tomato paste in it. It looks yummy though and also very simple.
The other Italian classic is from Rome - Pasta Cacio e Pepe. Felicity Cloake does her thing on this dish. You find it everywhere on menus all over Rome - again it is truly simple - the sauce is just cheese (pecorino) and black pepper - and some of the pasta cooking water - but it is amazingly yummy. I had some last time we were there.
When I was looking for suitable recipes for this post I came across Yotam Ottolenghi's Black Pepper Tofu.
Now I am not going to be making this anytime soon - I'm not a fan of tofu, but from the wide number of posts raving about it I'm guessing it is a super trendy dish. But I also came across the article quoted above by Sophie Mackenzie in the Oval Epicure in which she gives a quite amusing account of trying to make it - warning at the start "you should know that this is a terribly time-consuming dish to make" and finishing with these words:
"Reader, it disappointed me. Yes, it’s hot. The tofu is crisp and sticky. But ultimately, that’s what you get: crisp, sticky, peppery tofu, with rice. It’s nice, but it’s not worth the schlep. The same recipe with belly pork – now that I might try."
So there you go - not everyone is a fan.
There are so many more adventurous things you can do with black pepper though and the River Cottage A-Z article on pepper by Simon Lamb, said that pepper basically improved everything - and I mean everything. The trusty Guardian had a good selection of innovative recipes from here and there. How about Black Peppercorn Syrup, Stewed Blackberries and Vanilla Ice-cream, Chicken Slow-braised with Green Peppercorns, Strawberry and Pink Peppercorn Truffles or Gin and Tonic with Black Pepper Tincture. And there are others too. A really interesting selection, several of which I am tempted to try. Then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall also has a few, the most tempting of which were Cracked Green Peppercorn Biscuits.
These are my favourite sources but I'm sure if you fed in the name of your favourite cook and peppercorns you would find so many other things. For let's face it I have completely ignored its use in Asian cuisines and Middle-Eastern cuisines let alone the rest of the world. You can probably combine it with some kind of bush tucker too. I'm guessing there's a recipe for Kangaroo pepper steak somewhere.
In fact a whole lot more versatile than salt really. Or pepper and salt together. Aren't we lucky that it's so cheap and so readily available? And you must try the pasta.
